200 Jobs Lost With Wellington Factory Closure

8 February 2005

200 Jobs Lost With Wellington Factory Closure

ASSA ABLOY New Zealand (formerly Interlock Group) Ltd, announced to staff today that all operations at the Miramar factory will wind down through this year culminating in the total closure of the Miramar plant by the end of 2005.

In the future, all New Zealand based manufacturing and distribution activities will be carried out from the company’s North Shore site in Albany.

The future of the Miramar site was explained to the staff in July and August 2004 though at that time it was understood that the timeline to full closure would be some 2 to 3 years away. Current issues around competitiveness in the New Zealand market when competing against low cost imports, and the high exchange rates when trading with Japan, the USA and Australia, have accelerated the decision to move a large proportion of current production offshore.

In announcing the forthcoming operational changes in July last year, CEO D’Arcy Quinn advised that the move was to counter the arrival of directly competing Chinese sourced copies of Interlock’s core products, which had recently come off patent, and being offered to the market at prices similar to and below the cost of Interlock’s raw materials. He explained that to remain competitive Interlock had no option but to do the same and take advantage of its parent company’s established position in low cost manufacturing locations around the world.

There already has been and will continue to be some staff transfers of specialist roles to the Albany site, the new Interlock USA operation to be based in Nevada, and also, into a limited number of positions in Australia.

Moving operations from Wellington will result in 7 staff moving to the USA, 15 staff moving to Auckland, 15 new positions in Auckland and 34 staff moving to Australia. The Wellington closure will result in the loss of 200 positions in Wellington of which 140 are manufacturing team members.

ENDS

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